Helix Water District Board Member Joel Scalzitti tells the crowd at the Helix Operations Center on Vernon Way on Friday that the district’s new electrification project will be a model for the rest of the county.Photos and story by Karen Pearlman
March 27, 2026 (El Cajon) – While providing safe drinking water to their 278,000 ratepayers is their main goal, the Helix Water District has put some energy into other public utility needs.
On Friday, the District showed how infrastructure and mandates have led it to expand its portfolio, showing off its $11 million electrification project in El Cajon.
The project on Vernon Way is designed to power Helix’s fleet for the next 50 to 60 years — and acts as a pioneer for the region with a replicable success story for municipalities navigating the transition to zero-emission vehicles.
“This project will be a model for other agencies working to electrify their fleets,” said Helix Water District Board President Kathleen Coates Hedberg. “It helps the cities we serve meet their climate action plan goals while maintaining our commitment to reliability.”
The charging depot has 87 high-speed chargers that offer charging capacity ranging from 40 kilowatts to 640 kilowatts. The station offers 5.86 megawatts (enough to power more than 3,000 homes) and also has backup generators, said Helix Director of Operations Kevin Miller.
To keep the yard functional and safe, the district uses an innovative design that hangs many of the charging stations from overhead steel structures. The build aslo minimized trenching and construction costs while providing flexibility for daily operations and parking needs.
The Helix operations center in El Cajon houses the majority of the district’s fleet, which transports crews responsible for the maintenance of the district’s 742 miles of pipeline, valves, hydrants and meters.
“The district has been looking to be good stewards of the environment of a long time,” Miller said. “We’ve been able to reduce our carbon footprint by 40 percent over the course of the last 20 years and this is another component of that.”
Helix Director of Operations Kevin Miller shows how some vehicles will use the electric charging ports at the District’s Operations Center in El CajonMiller said the district expects its charging ports to become a regional hub to be shared with neighboring agencies including the County of San Diego, the City of El Cajon, and the Otay, Sweetwater and Lakeside water districts but that the ideal situation would be for other public facilities to open across the county.
The other agencies will reimburse Helix for the electricity they use, but Miller said that by opening the hub to external agencies, Helix is fostering a shared infrastructure model that accelerates the region’s transition to clean energy.
“It’s going to be a regionial hub for other agencies,” said Helix Water Board member Joel Scalzitti of the electrification site. “There will be some serious challenges when those state mandates come in. But we have ours in, so the others can use that facility till they get theirs up and running. Ours will be a model for the others. They’ll be coming to us, asking ‘How did you do this, how did you do that?’ We are the leaders in the industry, and that’s what we love to be.”
The collaborative model mirrors other major hubs, such as the San Diego Metropolitaion Transit System, which has been moving on more electrification to support its transition to zero-emission buses. On Friday, MTS received more than $60 million to work on advancing electric bus and light rail modernization. (MTS operates the East County Bus Operations and Maintenance Facility also on Vernon Way, just steps away from Helix’s site.)
State requirements and moving forward
Not only a local upgrade, the Helix electrification is a proactive move toward meeting state requirements.
Under California’s Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation, all public agencies must transition to 100 percent zero-emission vehicles for new purchases by 2027.
Miller said the district manages a complex fleet of about 100 gas-, electric- and hybrid-powered vehicles, ranging from passenger cars and light-duty pickups to dump trucks and massive excavators.
He said that in the future as the district’s gas-powered vehicles reach their end of life, they will be replaced by more energy efficient models.
When the district initially learned about the new requirements — unfunded state mandates — Helix Water District Board members said they were concerned about what would be required to charge its fleet, including the costs.
Helix Water District Board Member Dan McMillan said he was most proud that of the $11 million total cost of the project, about $10 million was covered from outside the district.
Helix received grants from from the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District ($5.3 million), San Diego Gas & Electric’s “Power Your Drive for Fleets,” ($2.2 million grants, $2 million rebate) and the California Energy Commission ($750,000).
The “behind the scenes” work involved digging miles of trenches and installing 20,000 linear feet of conduit.The Vernon Way site also includes high-speed ports that can charge a truck in about an hour for emergency response. In the event of a regional blackout, the system is designed to be supported by portable backup generators, ensuring the fleet remains mobile even when the grid is down.
The system utilizes separate SDG&E power connections: those dedicated to heavy-duty equipment and those for light-duty vehicles. This ensures the grid can support high-draw fast charging without disrupting the facility’s core operations, Helix officials said.
The district is using a sophisticated software system that manages the charging schedule, said Rick Azer, the president of Sector-Rise. The system, which Azer showed at the event using the software management company betterfleet.com, allows for fleet planning, fleet operations and charge management software and services, offering full transparency about usage.
In additioi to Better Fleet, Helix’s partners on the Operations Center project also include San Diego-based Consolidated Building Systems, Inc.; Black & Veatch; Par Western Line Contractors, LLC; Heliox Energy (Siemens), Autel Energy and Hubbell.